The queen has abdicated

[nineveh_uk]

To not particularly great surprise, Winter Olympics all time great, Marit Bjørgen has decided that it is time to hang up the ski boots. Not unexpected given that she is 38 and post-Olympics is a natural time for retirement, but still it is a bit weird. I went on my first skiing holiday in 2003, came home and found that Channel 4 then broadcast a couple of hours of cross-country skiing in the middle of the night. I was not an instant fan, which honour went to Bente Skari* for the remaining few weeks of the season, and noticed Bjørgen only in the next season, when Skari had retired and Bjørgen broke through to the top. But she has been there every since, with occasional pitfalls and one season on maternity leave, and it is going to be really weird to watch next year and know she won't be back.

Thanks, Marit, it's been a lot of fun.



*I have often liked the people who are at the top. And why not, they're good!

Comments

[grondfic]

Just for a moment there, I thought you'd lumbered us with Charles III.

Good luck to Marit in her retirement.

[nineveh_uk]

I apologise for the shock!

[zimena]

I thought of you when she announced her retirement. Even for me it was sad, but you must be heartbroken. :(. Even though it's not a surprise, it's still sad when your favourite ends her career.

I still find it strange that Jelena Välbe predicted Marit's retirement (including on which date it would be announced) about a week before it happened... and then it happened exactly as she predicted.

(Btw, I'm not sure you know about it or watched it, but NRK immediately made room for a live farewell show when Marit said that she would end her career. It was aired on that same eventing, and it was about 90 minutes long. If you cannot watch it from NRK's archive due to georestrictions, I can try to download it and send it to you. Let me know, ok?)

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you! I am definitely regretting not getting my act together to go and see her race at some point. It feels like the end of an era for me, too, much as you said on your own post. She has been there ever since I discovered cross-country skiing as more than a couple of intriguing pages in a book mostly about alpine skiing. I remember her being blonde!

I'll be really impressed by Välbe if she can predict what Northug is going to do...

I didn't know about that programme! Is it this one? https://tv.nrk.no/program/MSPO30000818/en-hyllest-til-marit-bjoergen I can't access it - basically anything with a bit of an FIS race in it tends to be restricted, though things turn up on YouTube - so if you were able to download it I'd be incredibly grateful! (Even more so if it is possible do to that with subtitles on, as my ability to understand spoken Norwegian is a lot less than when I'm reading. Especially when it is skiers being interviewed! But if that isn't practical, it doesn't matter.)

[zimena]

I'm sorry it took me so long to upload, but here is the link:
https://we.tl/Dmb9mFWooJ.

I would of course have downloaded it with subtitles if they were available, but there were none for this programme. Most likely, because it was shown live, so they also didn't add subtitles afterwards online. If there's anything specific that makes you wonder, you can always ask, and I'll try to translate it for you. Hope you'll enjoy!
(You have to download before May 1st, otherwise the file gets deleted).

As for Northug... I'm not that pleased about him being back on the team, because it means that he takes 98% of all attention again, which gets annoying really quickly. He did talk more sense yesterday than I'm used to hearing from him, though.

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you! (And I see you had a very good reason not to do it sooner :-) ) It has downloaded, and I am going to watch it tomorrow. I had forgotten that the live sport tends not to have subtitles - for obvious reasons, I suppose, but still frustrating to me! But if there are any bits that I am desperate to know I will ask.

Northug does seem to be being oddly reasonable just at the moment, so I can but hope that will continue. I won't hold my breath, though! I suspect that he'll get all the attention either way, at least this way there's a chance of him skiing vaguely competently as well.